Sexual Abuse and its Relation to Chronic Pain among Women from a Methadone Maintenance Clinic versus a Sexual Abuse Treatment Center

To determine the effect of sexual abuse history on chronic pain and its relation to opioid addiction and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), we studied current women MMT patients, and women patients from a sexual abuse treatment center with no history of opioid addiction. Questionnaires included Chronic Pain, Chronic Severe Pain, the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), and the Structured Interview for Disorders of Extreme Stress (complex-PTSD). Chronic severe pain was most prevalent among sexually abused women with no history of opioid addiction (64% of 25), followed by sexually abused MMT women (30.9% of 68), and MMT women with no history of sexual abuse (25% of 8, p = 0.01). Pain severity correlated with dissociation and complex-PTSD scores. The sexually abused non-MMT women had higher rates of high dissociation scores (DES ≥ 30) and complex-PTSD, but fewer obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms (scored ≥16) than the MMT sexually abused women. Chronic pain was found to be highly prevalent among sexually abused women, independent of being methadone-maintained with an addiction history. The high known prevalence of chronic pain among MMT patients, which may be attributable to opioid-induced hyperalgesia, may partially reflect the sexual abuse history, and should be targeted in future studies evaluating pain indices.